Smoking Gun
by scaenica
Summary: After a heist gone wrong and two years in a federal prison, Ysabel has turned her back to a life of crime and now makes a somewhat honest living as a private investigator. But just when she thinks she can finally leave her past behind her, and old friend pays her a visit - and offers her one last job. A modern!AU for the Thieves Guild.
1. Chapter 1

_[A/N: This was just a little thing I scribbled during my hiatus (which is kind of almost over). I posted it on tumblr but since it turned into something more substantial, I figured I'd upload it here as well. Not sure where or how far this is going but I guess we'll see. It's certainly something different than what I usually do._

_Side note: Ysabel also appears in 'A Chip Off The Old Block', 'Home' and 'Evenfall'._

_Hope you enjoy! Reviews are always appreciated.]_

* * *

**Smoking Gun**

_A modern Thieves Guild!AU_

_Chapter 1_

* * *

The bell above the door rings when she enters the small diner at the corner, bringing with her a gust of cold winter wind and a few snowflakes. The sudden warmth stings in her cheeks and eyes but is welcome nonetheless; the winters this far north are so much more bitter than what she is used to. She lets the door fall shut behind her and exhales slowly, evaluating her surroundings with one quick, proficient look. Nothing unusual. The waitress is bustling about behind the counter, occupied with the coffee machine. There are a few patrons, an old man at the counter, stirring his coffee, a young couple at the corner table, and a few teenagers who occupy one of the booths, all of them staring silently at their phones.

In the other booth, she finds who she is looking for. There's a cup of coffee in front of him, untouched and probably cold by now, and a few torn up sugar packages, part of which he is still holding between his fingers. Probably has played with them all the time. Needs to keep his hands busy when he's nervous.

He has looked up when the bell rang and now stares at her, failing to hide the nervousness on his face. A middle-aged man with far too much gel in his hair and a cheap coat that is supposed to look fancy. All that's missing is the fake Rolex, she thinks, suppressing a smile as she walks over and sits down across from him. The waitress scurries over to their booth, but she shakes her head. "Nothing for me, thanks. I'll be leaving in a minute."

Her acquaintance impatiently until the waitress has left, now once again fiddling with the already torn up sugar packages. She guesses he's a smoker but didn't want to go outside in case he'd miss her

"You have it?", he whispers and she almost rolls her eyes. Really the best way not to sound suspicious, acting all shadowy and conspiratorially… Damn amateurs.

"Right here." She slips a brown envelope onto the table but leaves her hand on it, and watches as the man's eyes flicker down on it, how his Adam's apple bops up and down when he swallows thickly, the twitch of his left eye before he gains control over himself again. Considering all the delicate little secrets the envelope contains, she isn't surprised at all. He's desperate. Good. Hopefully, that means he'll pay without making a fuss. "You got the cash?"

"Yes. Yes, of course." He glances around nervously before he pulls out a smaller but stuffed envelope, and hands it to her. She quickly stows it away in the pocket of her coat and simultaneously pushes her article of trade over the table. He snatches it and, after casting a glance inside, stares at the woman across from him with his mouth open. "How did you-?"

"No questions asked. That was the deal." The trade is done and she is already sliding out of the booth. "If you need my service again, you know how to reach me."

"Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much."

She gives him a strained smile before she leaves the diner. The snow is falling even thicker and heavier now, white flakes dancing against the yellow light of street lamps, headlights and shop windows. Her breath forms a cloud in the cold winter air and she turns up her collar, shivering, before she crosses the street, quickening her pace to avoid the oncoming cars. When she shoves her hands in her pockets, her fingers touch the envelope full of fifty-dollar notes in her pocket. She quietly smiles to herself while she walks down the sidewalk with long strides, casually mixing in with the pedestrians, walking through the falling snow, on their way home from work, or heading to one of the many bars. In a big city like this, with people coming and going every day, too careful to look at one another for too long or simply not interested in anything but themselves, it's easy to disappear in the anonymity of the crowd.

She takes the subway to the neighborhood where she's set up her place for now, walks up the stairs, waits until the pedestrian turn green, After she has crossed the street, she speeds up a bit, passing a few boutiques, cafés, the bookshop next to where she lives. She doesn't stop at her apartment building either; instead, she walks down another block and then turns into a small alley between two buildings, dark and poorly visible, nothing but dirt and a few dumpsters. There she waits.

The footsteps slow down when the man - she guesses it's a man from the way he walks and from his size, he's at least a head taller than her - reaches the alleyway. He lingers for a moment before he slowly turns and walks towards her. He probably can't see her, she's well hidden in the shadows, but it's a dead-end street, there's a wall behind her too high to climb. So if he's seen her coming in here, he knows she's here somewhere.

_Good._

In the pocket of her coat, her fingers touch the cold metal of her handgun. A Berretta, nine millimeter, nothing fancy, small and easy to conceal. She has barely ever fired it - never had to - but she's a decent shot and it certainly serves the purpose of scaring away certain people.

People like the one who's approaching her now.

His shadow against the light from the street is broad, bulky even, but that has never stopped her before. She wouldn't even need a gun to take him out but what's more important is to find out if he's just some pervert or if there's another reason why he is following her. Wouldn't be the first time something from her past comes back to haunt her.

When he is almost in front of her, she exhales slowly and controlled, and before he knows what is happening, she has jumped at him and pins his arm behind his back. From what she can feel, he's all muscle - this would definitively be more difficult if she didn't have the element of surprise on her side. But now, a well-placed kick against the hollow of his knee and his face is shoved into the wall and, a moment later, the barrel of her gun pressed against his necked.

"What do you want?" she hisses, twisting his arm a bit tighter until he groans in pain.

"Easy now, lass", her pursuer grunts, muffled by the wall his cheek is pressed against. "There's no need for that."

She almost drops the gun at the sound of his voice.

"_Brynjolf_?"

"Good to see you, too, Ysabel. Now, could you…"

She blinks, once, twice, before she recovers and slowly removes both her grip and the gun from him, though she doesn't put it away just yet. He recovers quickly, straightening up and turning around to face her. They stare at each for a while, Brynjolf smiling - she can't decide if it looks fond or just smug - and Ysabel still bewildered, until she regains her senses.

"What do you want, Bryn? If Mercer sent you, you can tell him to fuck off. I don't work for him anymore."

He chuckles lowly, and Ysabel inwardly curses herself for liking that sound. For realizing she has _missed_ it.

"Yeah, I heard you're self-employed now."

"You heard that, huh." She eyes him for a minute suspiciously. It's a rough business, what they both do, and a lonely one but he's probably the closest she has come to a friend in a very long time. Still, that doesn't give him the right to come back into her life, especially not like this. "Why the hell did you follow me, Brynjolf? Want to end up with a fucking hole in your head?"

The smile vanishes from his face. "I really need to talk to you, lass."

Finally, she decides to put the gun back into her coat. It gives her a reason to avoid his eyes. "I got nothing to say to you."

"You'd want to hear me out, lass. Trust me."

Brynjolf pauses briefly. For dramatic effect, of course it is, she thinks, he's always been good at charming people. Talking them into things they don't want to do. At least she thinks it's just a show - until he hears his next words.

"Karliah's back."

Her jaw drops. Did he really just say-?

"_Karliah_?"

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

"Yeah", the corners of his mouth twitch but it's not a joyful smile. "You wanna hear the full story now?"

Another moment of silence. The reasonable, the logical thing to do would be to tell him to fuck off and leave her alone once and for all. There was a reason why she has left him and Mercer and their little organization behind, and it was a bloody good reason. And yet, she knows what's going to happen once she gets home: She is not going to get the woman's name out of her head. She's going to dig into this anyway. Might as well hear the story from Bryn.

"Alright", she finally mumbles with a sigh, "But you're gonna buy me drink."

With a grin, he offers her his arm. The fucking gentleman that he is, she thinks darkly as she takes it, despite her better judgment. This is a bad idea.

"Or two", he jokes and she huffs disapprovingly.

"Shut up."

A really,_ really_ bad idea.


	2. Chapter 2

**Smoking Gun**

_A modern Thieves Guild!AU_

_Chapter 2  
_

* * *

They walk through the snow to a small bar two blocks from Ysabel's apartment, a small place with worn leather seats, soft orange light and quiet piano music playing from the speakers. It's not an especially fancy place but classy enough for her taste. She's been here often enough for the bartender to remember her face; he greets her with a nod when they enter and casts Brynjolf a curious look. Fair enough, she thinks, since she usually comes and leaves alone. They take a table by the window, and she orders a Scotch - an expensive one, not the kind that tastes like barely drinkable dishwater. Bryn doesn't blink an eye; he knows her taste, and he knows this is the very least he owes for simply for showing up like this.

She takes a sip, relishes the tingling on her tongue, the slight burning feeling in her throat. When she puts the glass down, she realizes Bryn is watching her, and not with that usual smirk of this - no, he looks unusally serious now, almost seems to _study_ her. And she finds herself thinking how much she has changed in the two years they haven't seen each other. He certainly hasn't, not one bit, still his old, charming self. Some might call it suave and smug, she thinks and hardly suppresses a smile that probably would have turned out somewhat affectionate. Instead, she clears her throat.

"Alright. You wanted to talk, so talk. How do you know she's back?"

As soon as the words leave her mouth, Brynjolf's expression turns grim, as if he has hoped to put off this conversation a little longer.

"You remember Aringoth?"

Of course she remembered that slimy old bastard. "Sure. What about him?"

"Well…" With a pause for dramatic effect, Bryn leans back in his chair and takes a drink from his beer. He really seems to enjoy the role of a storyteller and she briefly considers smacking him over the head. "Last week we found out he sold his.. ah… 'establishments'. All three of them."

"Seriously? Just like that?"

"Yeah. Maven was pretty damn pissed."

"Figures", she mumbles, slowly turning her whiskey glass in her hand, staring down into the golden liquid. For years, Maven Blackbriar has been using those 'establishments' - they're bloody brothels, that's what they are - to launder money from her less legal business investments, and the Guild has made sure Aringoth behaves properly and keeps his mouth shut, so that everything runs smoothly, and at the same time, cutting their fair share of the clubs' output. And now the whole thing's just… blown off? Of course Maven is pissed. And that means Mercer is as well. She almost feels pity for Brynjolf. Then again, this isn't her goddamn problem anymore.

"That's not all", he continues. "We figured her competition must have gotten some big investor. Honnibrew's goods have been of a much better quality the last few month and they were starting to put Maven out of her usual market. We were able to do some damage to the production but that's not gonna last if they manage to get more funding from somewhere."

"Still doesn't explain what Karliah has to with all of this."

"Well… first of all, we managed to get our hands on Aringoth's sales contract."

He opens his jacket, pulls a folded sheet of paper from the inside pocket and hands it to her in an almost grave gesture. Ysabel casts him an annoyed glance but unfolds the page nonetheless. The whole thing is more complicated than she has anticipated and she can't say that she isn't at least a bit curious what this is all about.

Nothing leaps to the eye when she scans the contract, though. "There's no name of the buyer on here", she remarks. Just a stamp where the signature should be. "What kind of symbol is that? Looks like… some kind of crown?"

"It's an Aztec symbol."

"Karliah lived in Mexico before she came here, right?"

"She did. And that symbol? We found the same on some letters to that Sabjorn guy, the one who's been handling Honnibrew's distribution."

Ysabel huffs quietly. "Alright. How do you know it's her?" It all seems a far too easy, too obvious, for someone who's supposed to be a criminal mastermind.

Bryn taps the edge of the paper she's holding. "Look at the name of the assignee who handled the purchase."

She does, and the whole thing makes even less sense. "I thought Gulum-Ei's still working for Mercer?"

"He was. Until a few weeks ago when he cut all ties and vanished. Wasn't too hard to find though. And with a little… convincing, he gave us a name."

"Karliah", she guesses.

"Exactly."

"Huh." Ysabel slides the contract over the table back to Bryn, and takes a sip of her Scotch while he puts the piece paper back in his pocket. "So she really is back. But… why now? And what did she do all these years?"

"No idea, lass, but now she seems determined to undermine everything we've built." He seems genuinely worried and when she thinks about it, she can't really blame him. She's been with the guild for only a couple of years, but she's heard the stories, how everything went south after Gallus' death, how he and Mercer rebuilt the whole operation and kept them together ever since. And it's not just business, at least for most of them. They're family, a weird one maybe, but all the same. Seeing all of that fall apart… she can't blame him for being worried.

But that still doesn't mean she wants anything to do with it. "So what do you want from me?"

"You're the best at finding people who don't want to be found." He smirks at her and takes another sip from his bottle. "Isn't that what you do now?"

"I told you, I don't work for Mercer anymore."

"Lass -"

He flinches back when she puts her glass down with a little bit too much force. "Don't fucking _lass _me, Bryn. You want me to help him? After he screwed me over like that?"

"You knew the rules, lass. You get caught, you're on your own."

"But I don't _get _caught." She takes a deep breath when she realizes she's raised her voice, trying to calm herself down. "You said it yourself, I'm the best at what I do. There was no way the feds could have known what I was doing unless someone tipped them off." She grits her teeth and downs the rest of her drink. "I'm not fucking stupid, I can put two and two together. Mercer thought there was a chance they were on to him, so he sacrificed a pawn. I took the fall for him."

"So… why didn't you talk to the feds? Make a deal?"

She leans back, arms crossed in front of her chest, and snorts angrily. "Are you crazy? I know what happens to people who are dumb enough to cross Mercer." Most of them end up somewhere in a dumpster, and usually not in one piece.

"Yeah", Bryn clears his throat uncomfortably, "Right."

She knows doesn't like to think of that, and he's lucky that this is usually not his job.

Sometimes she thinks he's just too good of a person for this line of work, even after all these years.

"And you know what?" She picks up her glass again to play with it, to keep her hands busy. "I'm not even angry at him." Oh, she's been angry, _very_ angry - but that was before she had lot of time on her hands to think about what happened and where she would go from there. Holding a grudge when you can't do shit about it isn't worth the energy. She can't change the past and she's not stupid enough to pick a quarrel with Mercer Frey. So, in the end, all that's left was to let it go and move on.

"We're just a bunch of thugs", she adds thoughtfully. Bryn chuckles, and Ysabel smiles, too. "And what's that saying, 'there's no honor among thieves', right? In his place, I probably would have done the same thing." She isn't sure if that's really true but it certainly makes her feel better to think this way. "But", she puts the glass down again and meets Brynjolf's eyes. "I'm not going to play in his little game any longer. I don't work for someone I can't trust."

"Then work for me", he suggest, and he's almost,_ almost_ pleading now. Briefly, she wonders if there's something else he's not telling her, some other reason why he wants her to come back so badly. "I'll pay you, with my own money, if I have to."

She knows he will, and she _does _trust him which is why she needs to get out of her before she does something really stupid. So she gives him her sweetest smile, while pushing back her chair and rising to her feet.

"Honey… you can't afford me."

From the corner of her eye, she can see the smile flickering over his lips and then vanishing. When she turns around to get her coat from the back of her chair, his expression has turned dark.

"He was my friend, too, you know?" He doesn't look at her, only stares grimly at the bottle on front of him. "Got me off the streets. Taught me everything I know."

Ysabel swallows thickly. That's not fair, what he's doing now. And she's pretty damn sure he's doing this on purpose because he knows her, knows their friendship still means something to her. Because even though she's repaid the debt and saved his ass more than once in the past years, she's still grateful.

_He did for you what you did for me._

He knows how he can get to her. The smart thing to do would be to turn around and walk away.

Instead, she exhales slowly and then sinks back into her chair.

"If I help you track her down, will you leave me alone?" She tries to ignore the relief on his face, and does her best to tell herself it's just self-satisfaction because he got her to do what he wanted. "No more jobs, no more favors?"

That charming smile tugs at the corners of his lips again. "You have my word, lass. You're not going to hear from me again if you don't want to."

"Fine", she grumbles and slumps in her chair, eyeing Bryn gloomily. "I know I'm going to regret this… but I'll help you."

_I am _so_ going to regret this._


End file.
